Thank you for visiting our forum. As a guest, you have limited access to view some discussion and articles. By joining our free community, you will be able to view all discussions and articles, post your own topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), respond to polls, upload photos, participate in Pick'Em contests and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free, so please join our community today!!

The rising use of air conditioners (ACs) in offices and homes is set to be a top driver of global electricity demand in the next 30 years, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said Tuesday.

Worldwide energy demand from air conditioners is set to triple by 2050, according to the IEA's "The Future of Cooling" report.

This increasing demand will need huge amounts of new electricity capacity, equivalent to the combined capacity of the U.S., Japan and European Union today. The number of air conditioners in buildings will hit 5.6 billion by 2050, up from 1.6 billion today, the study said.

By the same token, better thermal insulation of homes and more efficient ACs have non-trivial effects on the power load, depending on region/location and characteristics of the regional housing stock.

There is also one benefit of higher energy efficiency for power plants that alludes analysts. We know that higher efficiency causes a decline in power load that makes power generators operate less, but efficiency measures that target the peak load periods also lower the operation of the highest marginal cost turbines (highest marginal cost=lowest thermal efficiency). This is described by this paper: https://link.springer.com/article/10...053-015-9392-9.